The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a novel by author F. Scott Fitzgerald.The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his passion and obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan.He  resorting to crime to make enough money to impress her, and the flourishing materialism that characterizes her lifestyle.Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. According to  Fitzgerald ,the American dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness.

Nick Carraway ,a narrator who is young and Yale graduated from the MidWest. He takes a job as a salesman in New York. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area and next door to the lavish mansion of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire who throws party each weekend at his ostentatious Gothic mansion in West Egg but does not participate in them. Once Nick drives out to East Egg one evening for dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom,an former classmate of Nick’s at Yale. Nick meets Jordan Baker ,an attractive, cynical young golfer.Both involved in romantic relationship. She reveals to Nick that Tom has been having an affair with Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the "valley of ashes": an industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle to an apartment they keep for their affair. At the apartment, a vulgar and bizarre party takes place. It ends abruptly when Tom breaking Myrtle's nose after she annoys him by saying Daisy's name several times.

As the summer progresses, Nick receives an invitation to one of Gatsby’s legendary parties where he encounters Jordan Baker and both meets Gatsby ,a young man who affects an English accent, has a remarkable smile, and calls everyone “old sport.” Later Nick came to know from Jordan that Gatsby knew Daisy in Louisville in 1917 and is deeply in love with her. He spends many nights in hoping that one day he will rekindle his lost love.Nick find that those parties are an attempt to impress Daisy in the hope that she will one day appear again.Gatsby asks Nick to arrange a meeting between himself and Daisy but he was afraid that Daisy may refuse to see him.So Nick invites her without telling her about Gatsby.After that meeting Daisy and Gatsby begin an affair but after a short time Tom grows suspicious of his wife's affair. At the lunch at the Buchanan's house, Tom realized that Gatsby is in love with Daisy and although Tom is himself having an affair, he is furious at the thought that his wife could be unfaithful to him. He forces the group to drive into the city in a suite at the Plaza Hotel where Tom and Gatsby have a bitter confrontation. Tom denounces Gatsby for his low birth,and reveals that his  fortune comes from illegal activities like bootlegging alcohol.

Daisy's real allegiance is to Tom because when Gatsby begs her to say that she does not love her husband, she refuses him.Tom permits Gatsby to drive Daisy back to East Egg, in this way, he displays his contempt for Gatsby.When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes on their way home, they discover that Gatsby's car has struck and killed Tom's mistress, Myrtle. Nick later came to know that Daisy was driving the car at the time of the accident but Gatsby intends to take the blame anyway.

George Wilson, Mysrtle's husband became mad by the death of his wife, is desperate to find her killer and came to know from Tom that car driver was her secret lover and he is Gatsby .After finding out the yellow car is Gatsby's, he arrives at Gatsby's mansion where he fatally shoots both Gatsby and then himself. After the murder, the Buchanans leave town to distance themselves from the violence for which they are responsible.Nick is left to organize Gatsby's funeral, but finds that few people cared for Gatsby.Nick seeks out Gatsby's father, Henry Gatz, and brings him to New York for the funeral. From Henry, Nick learns the full scope of Gatsby's visions of greatness and his dreams of self-improvement. Nick moves back to the Midwest, disillusioned with the Eastern lifestyle.He realized that greed and dishonesty have corrupted people .

Da vinci code

Da Vinci Code is a mystery-detective and a literary-fiction novel by Dan Brown.The central idea of novel is that the Church has enforced ignorance about the existence of the descendants of Jesus .Its all about reality behind Church and art history and also ignores the power of women.The novel is giving reincarnation to the past stories of Jesus's life,the pentacle and the Last Supper. Da Vinci Code has give rise to speculate the Holy Grail legend and Mary Magdalene's  role in the history of Chrisianity.The idea that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child,deciphering the symbols found in many works of art .The whole story revolve around the  finding of the murder victim in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre of Jacques Sauniere, naked and posed like Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing, the Vitruvian Man, with a cryptic message written beside his body and a pentagram drawn on his chest in his own blood.

Harvard Professor Robert Langdon, who visited town on business issue was asked by Police detective Bezu Fache to decode the cryptic message left on murdered body. Last night Louvre ,the keeper of church and Grand Master Jacques Saunière fatally shot one night at the museum by an albino Catholic monk named Silas,who wants the location of the keystone,which will helps in finding the Holy Grail is .Before going to die Sauniere leaves a message i.e he paints a pentacle on his stomach with his own blood, draws a circle with his blood, and drags himself into the center of the circle, re-creating the position of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. He also leaves a code, a fibonacci sequence, and two lines of text on the ground in invisible ink.
Sophie Neveu, an agent of the department of cryptology,secretly explains to Langdon that she is Saunière's estranged granddaughter, and that Fache thinks Langdon is the murderer, because her grandfather's message said "PS Find Robert Langdon", which she says Fache had erased prior to Langdon's arrival.But actually according to Neveu, P.S. are the initials of her grandfather’s nickname for her,Princesse Sophie whereas Langdon thinks that P.S. might stand for Priory of Sion,an ancient brotherhood devoted to the preservation of the pagan goddess worship tradition.Langdon decodes the second and third lines in Saunière’s message: “Leonardo Da Vinci! The Mona Lisa!.By this Sophie returns to the paintings to look for another clue. Sophie finds a key behind the Madonna of the Rocks.
She and Langdon escapes from police and move to a safe deposit box at the Paris branch of the Depository Bank of Zurich. In the safe deposit vault they find the keystone: a cryptex, a cylindrical, hand-held vault with five concentric, rotating dials labeled with letters. When these are lined up correctly, they unlock the device. If the cryptex is open forcely, an enclosed vial of vinegar ruptures and dissolves the message inside the cryptex. The cryptex can only be opened with a password.
Langdon went his friend Sir Leigh Teabing, an expert on the Holy Grail ,to ask for his help for opening the box and tell that Grail is not a cup but a tomb having bones of  Mary Magdalene. All the three find out that the password is combination of letters "SOFIA" Neveu' name and after   Opening the cryptex, they found a smaller cryptex inside it, along with another riddle that ultimately leads to the tomb of Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey.
All the three flee from the country ,during the flight Neveu reveals the source of her estrangement from her grandfather.Once on arriving home from university, Neveu clandestinely witnesses a spring fertility rite conducted in the secret basement of her grandfather's house. She got shocked to see her grandfather having sex with a woman at the center of a ritual attended by men and women who are wearing masks and chanting praise to the goddess. She flees the house and breaks off all contact with Saunière. Langdon explains that what she witnessed was an ancient ceremony known as "sacred marriage".By the time they arrived they revealed that Teabing is the teacher for whom Silas was working .Teabing gives Langdon the cryptex and asks Langdon and Sophie to help him open it. Langdon figures out that the password is apple. He opens the cryptex and secretly removes its contents before destroying it in front of Teabing. Fache arrested Teabing and came to know that Langdon is innocence .
The final message inside the second keystone  revealed that Neveu is a descendant of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. The Priory of Sion hid her identity to protect her from possible threats to her life. Neveu and Langdon find out Neveu's long-lost brother, whom Neveu had been told died as a child in the car accident that killed her parents and also his long-lost grandmother Marie Chauvel Saint Clair.
The meaning of the last message is that the Grail is buried beneath the small pyramid where he is sure the Grail must be hidden. 

The fountain Head

The fountain Head, one of the major novel of Ayn Rand. The fountain head is all about the individualistic and collectivism.One man against the system and each person is expected to think primarily about himself and to live primarily for himself. Here Rand had showed two characters foils one works for success by using immoral and other works for excellence. Howard Roark ,a protagonist of novel, a architect who defines integrity by architecture rather than a person whereas Peter Keating who is untalented rabble  and naysayers  can do any immoral to get success. Roark who does not put on manners, or false flattery, or false dislike in order to impress others with a false designs. He believes to practice modern architecture which is superior and more elegant than other traditional buildings. He was suffered many times as he refuses to comply with what other people think of as good, he has his own ideas and does not give merit to others' ideas because someone else thought of them.Rand demonstrates that there is no such thing as love of humanity but there is only love of individuals. One thing about novel is Power, it says  "a man who goes after power" is the "worst second-hander of all" a person living for the power he has over other men, a person gives all those people power over himself.

The novel begins as Howard Roark is expelled from Stanton as he refused to follow the school's orthodoxy and Peter Keating graduates who is vacuous student but popular as Roark used to help him out in his projects.They both go to New York City to begin their careers ,Keating to a firm with a good reputation, Francon & Heyer,  and Roark to work with a man that he knows understands his mission, Henry Cameron. At first, Keating is the successful one; he climbs high in his firm by pushing out those whose positions he wants, and gains commissions for his firm and last he became partner.

 Ellsworth Toohey, a journalist in charge of many organizations in the city, praises Keating highly whereas Roark, on the other hand, cannot get work because he refuses to compromise and put useless features on his buildings . Toohey used to say that Roark's style is unorthodox and illegitimate. Roark goal is to stick with his own design and strives to make structures more efficient. He must get a job in a quarry owned by Guy Francon, doing manual labor. There he meets Dominique Francon, starts a love affair with her that is painful for both of them. Dominique knows that Roark is great men who cannot be recognized for his great work so she rejects Roark and praises Keating .She offers Keating for marriage. Dominique turns her entire spirit over to Keating.

Though Keating being success but also he became empty,so to have a prestigous commission by Gail Wynand, the owner and editor-in-chief of the Banner, Dominique agrees to sleep with Wynand. When they meet, Wynand is so strongly attracted to Dominique that he planned  Keating's divorce from her, and Wynand and Dominique are married.Wynand wants to build house for himself and Dominique so he discovers that every building he likes was designed by Roark, therefore he enlists Roark to build the new house. Roark and Wynand become close friends, although Wynand does not know about Roark's past relationship with Dominique.

Keating takes Roark help to design as he had lost his sense to design the Cortlandt Homes and he accepts on the condition that he will have complete control over design and construction. But, the homes are not built as Roark wished, so Roark dynamites the project as it is being completed. He stands trial and is found not guilty.He and Dominique come together and leave Wynand.  Wynand closes the paper anyway, and asks Roark to build the Wynand Building, as they had discussed when they were friends. Howard Roark, the hero of the Fountainhead, triumphs.

The murder of Roger Ackroyd

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a detective fiction by Agatha Christie. It is one of Christie's controversial novel.It based on the most elegant of all twists, the narrator who is himself to be the murderer. There are no scenes of violence instead, the novel primarily features characters having civilized discussions and attending social gatherings. Every character in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd has a secret, and because of that everyone comes into danger of investigation.The novel moves all around the murder of Ackroyd.

Dr. James Sheppard,who narrated a novel and he is a physician in the town of King’s Abbott. The story begins with the death of Mrs. Ferrars, a wealthy widow. Many people in town believe Mrs. Ferrars poisoned her husband a year before and due to guilt she commited suicide. On the other side Roger Ackroyd, the town’s wealthiest citizen who was expected to marry Mrs. Ferrars was in great distressed. Once he invites all his close people for dinner party,to discuss some important issue i.e Dr. Sheppard , Mrs. Cecil Ackroyd, Roger’s sister-in-law, Flora Ackroyd, his niece (who recently got engaged to Ackroyd’s stepson Ralph Paton), Geoffrey Raymond, Ackroyd’s young secretary, and Major Blunt, Ackroyd’s friend. Deeply worried, Ackroyd finally has a private discussion with Dr. Sheppard after dinner. In his study, he reveals to Dr. Sheppard that  Mrs. Ferrars killed her husband, and she was also blackmailed for it. Ackroyd receives a letter, a suicide note, in the post from Mrs Ferrars, which he will finish reading after Sheppard leaves. On the way home Dr. Sheppard ,he bumps into  a stranger who aks for directions to Fernly Park. At home, Dr. Sheppard and his sister Caroline are about to go to bed when the phone rings. He explains to Caroline that Parker has called from Fernly Park to tell him that Ackroyd has been murdered. Dr. Sheppard rushes over, but when he gets there Parker says he never made such a call.Nonetheless, they break into Ackroyd’s locked study and find him murdered in his chair.

The next day, Flora Ackroyd call the retired Belgian detective Hercule Poirot,Dr. Sheppard’s new neighbor,  to investigate the murder.As Flora is worried that the police suspect Ralph Paton (Flora's feonsay)for killing her uncle. The police have found footprints matching a pair of shoes that Ralph owned outside the window to Ackroyd’s study, and at 9:30 pm , Major Blunt and Geoffrey Raymond both  informed that Ackroyd speaking to someone in his office. Placing Ackroyd's death into a narrow time frame for which Parker, Raymond, Blunt, Mrs Ackroyd, and Miss Russell, the housekeeper, all have alibis . Although all members of Ackroyd’s household will have financial gain from his death, in that Ralph especially will have the bulk of his uncle’s fortune. Police trace the telephone call to Dr Sheppard to King's Abbott station and the position of a grandfather chair in Ackroyd’s office, which had been moved into the center of the room when Dr. Sheppard and Parker found the body. Poirot proceeds to collect more information on suspects not in the house, including the representative of a dictaphone company who had visited Ackroyd some days previously. He asks the exact time at which Dr Sheppard met the stranger at the Fernly Park gates. Poirot finds a goose quill and a scrap of starched cambric in the summer house, and a ring with the inscription "From R" in the backyard pool. Poirot notices that the parlourmaid Ursula Bourne has no alibi for the murder.

  The police, meanwhile, have tracked down the stranger ,Charles Kent who approached Fernly Park the night of the murder and arrest him.Meanwhile, Poirot came to know  that Flora lied about wishing her uncle goodnight instead, she had been busy in stealing money to settle some debts of her own and revealed that Major Blunt is  secret lover of Flora and  Flora and Ralph Paton are not really in love, but merely engaged for convenience’s sake.Poirot asks for a second  meeting in that the goose quill is a heroin holder belonging to the stranger Sheppard met , Miss Russell's illegitimate son Charles Kent .Poirot reveals the ring belongs to Ursula Bourne, who is secretly married to Ralph Paton and they met around 9:30 in the summerhouse and fought about his announced engagement to Flora Ackroyd.

Poirot summons all the suspects once again and reveals all these discoveries. He further reveals that he has determined Ackroyd purchased a dictaphone the week before and that is what Raymond and Blunt heard  Ackroyd was talking to someone at 9:30. He then reveals Ralph Paton, who Dr. Sheppard had been hiding him by pretending a patient in a local asylum.  Ralph admits that he fought with Ursula in the summerhouse, then walked around, frustrated. He does not have an alibi for the time of the murder.

He discharges the group, but asks Dr. Sheppard to stay behind. In a stunning plot twist, Poirot reveals that it is Dr. Sheppard who is the murderer. Sheppard  programmed the Dictaphone to go off at 9:30 and stabbed Ackroyd before leaving him that night,provide him with an alibi, then snuck around the side of the house, crawled into Ackroyd’s study, locked it from the inside, and planted the footprints with Ralph’s shoes in the mud. He hid Ralph so that the police would find him more suspicious. He murdered Ackroyd because it was he, Dr. Sheppard, who was Mrs. Ferrars’ blackmailer, and he knew if Ackroyd found out he would be ruined.  
Poirot will go to the police in the morning, and hoping that Poirot can keep the truth from his sister Caroline, Dr. Sheppard goes home and prepares to kill himself with an overdose of Veronal.

Train to Pakistan

Train to Pakistan is the novel by Khushwant Singh. The novel is all about the Partition of India after 1947 . India got Independence in 1947 from British rules but actually they didn't get independence from communal riots and also from religious hatred that are inside themselves.Its all about the DIVISION .There was a great tension near border of Inda and Pakistan.The novel give clear image of  massacres of Hindus and Muslims, especially on the border towns of India.
Train loads of dead bodies used to arrive from Pakistan to India and from India to Pakistan.People were killed without mercy.Women and girls are ruthlessly gang-raped.After reading this we will find out that blame could not be on one group, actually all are responsible. Muslims said the Hindus had planned and started the killing. Hindus said, the Muslims were to blame. The fact is, both sides killed ,shot,looted and raped.

The Story is of village Mano Majra, the border of both the country where great religious diversity Hindus,Muslims and Sikhs lived side by side happily.Even mulla of Mosque Imam Baksh visit Gurudwara whenever needed and similarly Sikh's priest Meet Singh too .So the story starts with dacoity and murder of local money-lender , Lal Ram Lal .The dacoits were the Malli and gang  ,who were looking for their old fellow gang member and leader Juggut Singh, a Sikh of great height, build and with a bad reputation and Malli throw bangles in Juggut Singh house. During the event of "dacoit", however, "Jugga" was making love with his girlfriend, Nooran, the daughter of the town's Mullah Imam Baksh. After dacoity, Imran Singh ,well-educated,social reformer arrived in town to organize the peasants for the People's Party of India. Malli and his gang try to pin the crime on Jugga, which results in the arrests of both Iqbal and Jugga due to local suspicions. They are arrested due to the orders of Hukum Chand, the corrupt,unethical regional magistrate.One day people saw the train from Pakistan loaded with dead bodies and burned by soldier. So conflict starts to rise in Mano Majra too like other towns and cities.On the order of Hukum Chand a group of soldiers comes by to evacuate the Muslim half of town (the other half is Sikh) to Pakistan which leads Nooran to depart from Mano Majra .After the Muslims are evacuated, a local band of Sikhs and Malli with group come to Mano Majra to full up anti-Muslim sentiment and sabotage the train that was taking the Muslims to Pakistan.When Hukum Chand came to know about this sabotage of train ,he filledvwith guilt over his own sins, releases both Iqbal and Jugga to stop the killing, and despite Iqbal's self-image as a social reformer and Jugga's self-image as a dacoit, Iqbal drinks himself into a stupor while Jugga gives his life destroying the rope the Sikh soldiers had set up to throw Muslims on top of the train off to their deaths.